


Misgivings

by arpita



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, I still have NO clue how this will turn up, Maybe - Freeform, Slight Canon Divergence, like a follow up to a follow up to a follow up to follow up sort of a thing, uhhh welll... this is a sequel to a previous stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 23:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19239508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arpita/pseuds/arpita
Summary: Vallabhi, Bhallaladeva's wife still maintains a safe distance from her husband.





	Misgivings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts), [Medhasree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medhasree/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Gada Parva](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18930655) by [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/pseuds/MayavanavihariniHarini). 



> 1\. This is a sequel to a previous work posted here.
> 
> 2\. All feedback, is always welcome with wide open arms.

_So much for marriage,_ Vallabhi mused as she braided her hair.

_You have to be here for the rest of your life,_ her husband's deep voice remains stuck in her mind like the refrain of a poem. 

Bhallaladeva had fought, injured, maimed and killed in his pursuit of her. Somehow, she had managed to convey to him that his efforts had gone in vain. Her success lay in the fact that Bhalla didn't push himself any further to persuade her out of her anger. 

On occasion, he sent her her favourite flowers, or a fragrance that she might prefer. And, as he would have expected, she turned them down. 

"Why do you keep him away, My Lady?" her attendant asks her.

"I cannot overlook his wrongs." comes the terse answer. The other woman sighs.

"What if he takes another wife?" Malini asks again.

Vallabhi snorts. Somehow her attendant senses derision. 

"Then that would leave me unencumbered to return to my country." She answers in a monotone. 

_Royal men and their whims,_ Vallabhi thought. Her husband had once sought Devasena's hand in marriage, whether it was to best Amarendra, because he was the one who had courted her, or whether he really did want her, she didn't know.

She didn't want to know either. At times, her eyes involuntarily wander off to the cage in the middle of the Maahishmati courtyard. 

Her breath hitched at the sight. The Princess of Kuntala wrenches her heart in ways unknown. Vallabhi is reminded of the terrifying lores that did rounds of her Palace in Saurashtra.

_"He had The Younger Prince slain." a ministrel had said._

_Not just slain, she is reminded. Some also said that Amarendra Baahubali's corpse had been mutilated._

_"What happened to the Queen Mother?" she had once asked Malini._

_"Hush! Hush, My Lady!" she had exclaimed, terrified. "We never speak of that benighted night. And you shouldn't either."_

_"I'm espoused by a demon." Vallabhi tells herself in a matter of reinforcement._

_**But what of her heart that still longed for her Kumara?** _

 

\---

"Insufferable brat, that girl is!" Bijjaladeva angrily tells his son. 

Bhallaladeva snorts affectionately. Vallabhi was far more difficult than he had thought. Her resentment of their wedding night had continued for three months following that. Since then, all his efforts had been spurned again, and again. 

She had kept her distance, and he had persisted in his exertions to break the wall between them, even as the Maahishmati Crown occupied most of his time. At times, he marvelled at his patience for restraining himself from not barging into her chamber. 

Though, occasionally his urges let him take a courtesan to bed with him. But then-

_They weren't Vallabhi. For all their expertise in pleasing him, they had none of her warmth, or beauty, or audacity, or-_

- _ **A genuine share of his affections.**_

There's nothing that he would deny her. Nothing at all, practicable or otherwise, would escape his effort when it came to her.

And hence, if she sought distance, he allowed it.

_Albeit with the hope that she would come around, some day or the other._


End file.
